The present invention relates, in one aspect, to a method and a system for placing and responding to published advertisements by employing anonymous connection between a caller, and a subscriber who has placed the advertisement, by employing Direct Inward Dialing (DID) services to expedite such anonymous connection. In another aspect, the present invention relates to a method and a system for enabling limited and automated contact with those having unpublished telephone numbers, such as and for example enabling facilitated and automated contact with individuals who do not wish that their telephone numbers be published, and with groups such as physicians "on-call". In yet another aspect, the present invention relates to a system and method for maintaining anonymity of a person calling another even if the receiving party has a service (sometimes called automatic number identification, i.e., ANI, or caller ID) which provides the originating telephone number to the receiving party.
Briefly, the aforementioned '890 patent discloses a telephone system "personals" service whereby "personals" ads are placed and published as previously known. A person reading an ad, the caller, and interested in establishing a personal relationship with the person who placed the ad, the subscriber, calls a telephone number published in the "personals" column. The number called is that of a central computer based system, and the caller is prompted to enter the subscriber's reference number (SRN) furnished in the ad and unique to the subscriber. The computer then uses the subscriber reference number as an index to locate the subscriber's telephone number, and automatically connects the caller to the subscriber. Only the computer is aware of the identity of the subscriber and the subscriber's telephone number, and hence the parties can communicate with one another while being mutually anonymous for as long as they desire.
The full text and teachings of the '890 patent are incorporated herein by reference.
In the aforementioned '239 patent, certain cost-saving refinements were made using available features of the public telephone company (in particular, a service sometimes called the "Centrex" phone service) to connect a caller to a subscriber. Briefly, the caller is placed on hold at the telephone company's central office switching equipment and, concurrently, the subscriber's telephone number is located in the interactive system's memory. The subscriber is then called and also put on hold at the central office switching equipment. Finally, by hook flashing or some other means, the interactive system makes a connection between the caller and the subscriber at the telephone company's central office switching equipment, and disconnects the system from the line that originally was occupied by the caller, thus making the line available for the next incoming call. Utilizing this technique, the total number of lines required by the interactive system to provide adequate service to all callers and subscribers is minimized, for the system needs only enough lines to simultaneously process a peak number of calls that are expected at the same time, without having to consider the unknown and uncontrollable length of time that a caller and a subscriber may want to talk to one another.
Similarly, the full text and teachings of the aforementioned '239 patent are incorporated herein by reference.
While the aforementioned '890 patent provides many features never before available in a standard classified advertisement system, and while the aforementioned '239 patent has improved the efficiency of such a system, there is still a need to simplify the system to minimize voice prompting and to speed the procedure of anonymous connection.